The road to Venice

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Heading to Venice, we stop first in at Verona, the home of Romeo and Juliet. Juliet’s balcony was definitely a sight to behold more so for the story it inspired that for the balcony itself. There’s also a crazy amount of graffiti in the tunnel leading up to it, with messages of love and people putting their name on the wall in the hope of receiving good luck in love (yes, I too put my name there ;-) ). But I really liked Verona, wandered around this historic city that sits in the middle of nowhere, just a relaxing sort of vibe I guess. Oh and had the world’s best kebab there too (I know it’s Italy, but hey sometimes you just need a kebab, especially after the last night in Venice).

We arrive late into Venice, and with a trip to the actual island of Venice the next day, it was an early night for me.

Venice is a strange city, an island build from logs with an unthinkable amount of concrete supported on top. We had a full day on the island. A guided tour took us around the major highlights. It’s an incredible display of architecture, much like most places in Europe, but unfortunately the massive number of tourists really takes something away from its beauty. We took a gondola ride, as you have to do in Venice, and well .... meh! I can tick it off the bucket list, but honestly maybe if it was twilight and you were proposing to the love of your life, it would be amazing and romantic, but the driver didn’t sing like in the movies, and with a group of friends it was fun but nothing really that I’d write home about. Probably one of the best highlights was seeing a glass blowing demonstration. It really was out of this world. I’ve seen glass blowing before so I wasn’t overly fussed, but when I saw this old master create a solid statue of a miniature horse, it was honestly the closest thing to real magic I have ever seen. If I saw it on Youtube or something I would have said it was a fake, you really have to see it to believe it, truly amazing. By 2 o’clock, everyone else had just about seen enough so they were all parked up back at St Mark’s square relaxing and sleeping off the night before, but I figured how many times do you get to come to Venice, so I went walking. Venice really does have the most amazing and intricate array of alleys and canals, you can easily get yourself completely lost yet not be all that far from the major centres. I had a little game I played where I would get to an intersection, look down all four directions, and then head down the one with the least people. And then at the next intersection, repeat the process. And eventually there was no one but me and Venice. It was great to get away from the bustling tourists, and there were so many interesting alleyways and dead ends that just led straight into a canal and little bridges over rarely used sections of canals. It was quite an experience. What makes it easier is that all over the walls there are directions back to Piazza St Marco, so when you want to head back just follow the signs and you won’t be more than 10 minutes from civilisation.

We only had one day, but with Venice, one day really is enough. I left fairly well content.

One event that soured the experience a little was that on getting home from Venice, my room had been broken into and my laptop plus a series of assorted chargers was stolen. It’s my own fault really, I left it sitting out on the table and the window was ajar, so they’ve slashed the screen and climbed in the window. Worst part was that I lost my journal from the first few days in London.

But anyway, putting that behind me, that night was a masquerade party back at the campsite and I had purchased a really creepy set of comedy tragedy masks (a happy and a sad face) in Venice and wore one on my face and the other on the back of my head. Got a lot of “awesome”s and more than a few “that’s creepy”s but overall a good response. Had a great night, got introduced to a couple of new cocktails, the ‘Amnesia’ and its evil step brother the ‘Attitude Adjustment’, and partied on until the wee hours of the morning.

No key words for Venice so next up, Florence. Ciao!

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